Revelling in the riotous atmosphere, and overjoyed to finally turn a wheel in anger, Macklin was in his element. Even though it was only a hillclimb, he went for broke, using every trick he'd learned from his time on the sidelines, and, of course, his late night runs on London's streets. After a nearly-flawless run around the narrow, twisty course, he hopped out of the Fuzzi to find that he'd set the fastest time in his category. As the hours ticked by nobody else beat it, and, by the end of the day, Lance Macklin had his first racing victory. It wasn't much, but he was over the moon. As chuffed as he was by his early taste of success, Macklin quickly figured out that hillclimbing wasn't what he wanted to do. Racing up a hill in the Fuzzi was fun, and he was certainly learning more every time he went out, but it lacked the wheel-to-wheel action and high speeds that he'd seen on the continent and in his youth at Brooklands. He wanted to get on a proper racing track.

Unfortunately for him - and other ambitious young British racing drivers - there was a profound lack of British circuits to race at. The British postwar racing scene was dominated by hillclimbs and sprints simply because they were easy to get going in Britain's shattered economy. Even though the war had been over for several years the British still had to live as if it were going on, in a sense: not having to worry about bombs but still dealing with harsh wartime rationing. Essential items were in short supply. The country was broke. It was a gloomy age of austerity, and, of the many things to sort out, motor racing was not high on the priority list. The great old British racing circuits hadn't had a good war. Donington Park, which had been requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence and turned into a military vehicle depot, didn't reopen until 1977.

Macklin's beloved Brooklands, which had been the scene of so many family victories and brought back hundreds of memories, fared even worse. Used for RAF aircraft production during the war, the track had been cut up and left to decay. Bought by Vickers-Armstrongs in 1946, it never reopened. Still, there were signs of progress. During the war a host of aerodromes had been hastily built for the RAF, most of them in southern England, only to be left abandoned once hostilities ceased. Usually shaped like triangles, it was only a matter of time before their long straights and natural hairpin bends caught the attention of ambitious motor racing fans. In 1947, young Maurice Geoghegan and a bunch of friends took to the disused Silverstone aerodrome on the Northamptonshire/Buckinghamshire border for a short, wild race. Despite the affair ending with Geoghegan driving into an unfortunate sheep that had wandered onto the tarmac, the idea of Silverstone as a race track stuck.

The following year, the venerable Royal Automobile Club placed a lease on the airfield and turned it into a full-blown, if somewhat rough and ready, race track. Others, like the Thruxton circuit in Hampshire, soon followed. For eager young racers like Macklin, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.